Guestpost: L.A. Witt - O Come All Ye Kinky

Thank you for joining us on the O Come All Ye Kinky virtual book tour! For two weeks, anthology editor Sarah Frantz and her merry band of authors will be stopping by some of your favorite blogs to spread kinky holiday cheer! How, you ask? Well, if you don’t know what candy caning is yet, pick up your copy of O Come All Ye Kinky from Riptide Publishing today and see how these authors get into the holiday spirit.

Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, follow our tour for the chance to win one heck of a stocking stuffer—a $100 gift card to The Stockroom, where kinky dreams come true! Leave a comment on the post below by Dec. 16 and you’ll be entered to win.  Check out the complete tour listing to see all the places we’ll be stopping by to chat about BDSM, the holidays, and all eight steamy stories, and comment on each post to earn more entries.

*Holds up mistletoe*  Look at that—our lovely host today is under the mistletoe! You know what that means—a big kiss from the entire O Come All Ye Kinky group for hosting us today! We hope everyone enjoys today’s post from L.A. Witt.

“Riptide Edits, Revisited” by L.A. Witt

Yes, it’s that time again: time for L.A. Witt to wax sarcastic about the Riptide editing process. I truly love Riptide because their editing is insanely awesome. But it’s also brutal. And considering I’m midway through my fourth Riptide edit as I write this, with several more planned for next year, I think it’s only fair that I get to poke fun at them for it.

Though O Come All Ye Kinky is a winter holiday-themed book, it actually had some ties to Halloween, too. You see, a lot of the editing took place in October. And I thought that was rather apropos. I mean, that’s the time of year when slasher films are at their most popular. When we twisted people flock to the theatres and Netflix (or, if you’re particularly nostalgic, Blockbuster) and then shovel candy into our mouths while people are hacked, shot, sliced, diced, mutilated, impaled, boiled, grated, zested, minced, and chopped to death in true Hollywood fashion.

The edits for O Come All Ye Kinky were obviously not as time-consuming for the authors as a novel would be. 10,000 words is naturally only going to take so long to edit compared to 100,000 words. Now, for our poor (yeah, right) editor Sarah Frantz, it was likely the equivalent to editing a novel, because she still gutted every story with novel caliber brutality.  Except instead of….well, let me put this more appropriately.

Being the author of a standalone novel during a Riptide edit is sort of like playing the lead role in something like Silent Hill. You’re just a meek, vulnerable human, haplessly wandering into this terrifying landscape of hell and horror, and in spite of all the danger and chaos, you just hope you make it out in one piece. And I haven’t actually seen Silent Hill, so I have no idea if the main character makes it out in one piece or gets turned into a hellhound’s chew toy, but I can say on good authority that Riptide authors do generally make it out alive. I think a few have gone missing, but search parties haven’t given up yet and the majority of us just leave with stitches, third degree burns, and/or 1980s earworms.

A collection of short stories is a little different. It’s more like House on Haunted Hill.  Eight strangers suddenly find themselves trapped inside a dark, scary place, and the forces of evil slowly pick them off one by one in progressively bloodier and more twisted ways until only one of us remains. While one unfortunate character is sliced to ribbons with razors and then dunked repeatedly into a vat of lemon juice, another is put on a rack and forced to watch Justin Bieber videos.  We all suffer separately, and yet together, united in our agony, while Sarah watches us on closed-circuit television and cackles like a madwoman.

In the end, whether it’s one or eight of us, the result is the same: all our gristle and bones are put back together, tied up in neat little bows, and presented to our readers. In this case, it’s just in time for the holidays. Ta da! O Come All Ye Kinky.

So does that mean I’m comparing Sarah to the evil forces behind Silent Hill or House on Haunted Hill?

Not really.

Judging by that cackling I hear going on backstage, I’m more inclined to compare her to that sadistic clown thing in Saw, but with better hair.

Here’s the blurb for my story, “Candy Caning.”

Nate is dreading the annual Christmas visit with his family, during which they will ignore or insult his partner and Dominant. Stephen tries hard to take Nate’s mind off the trip with the promise—and threat—of a three-foot-long candy cane. It’s a race to see if Nate’s resolve or the candy cane will shatter first.

And here’s what you can expect to find in the anthology as a whole:

Christmas is a time of love and joy, and the New Year is a time of renewal. But they are also times of stress and strife, family drama, pressure and heartache—a potent mix of high expectations and conflicted emotions. Add in power exchange relationships, kinky gift swaps, and unconventional love in a sometimes unforgiving world, and you have a formula for a sizzling anthology of stories that tug at your heart.

From Ava March’s forbidden Regency love between men, to Katie Porter’s scorching hot contemporary tale of two women discovering holiday happiness, everyone will find a favorite here. Pervertible toys abound: Lambda Literary Award finalist L.A. Witt’s candy cane, Jane Davitt’s wrapping paper and tape, and Alexa Snow’s Christmas candles all please and delight. Newcomer Elyan Smith and fan favorite Kim Dare both celebrate New Year’s Eve with romantic flair and kinky fireworks, while bestselling author Joey W. Hill’s poignant story of discovery and commitment will lead you home.

Whatever your desires, we invite you to explore new fantasies and old with these eight kinky tales of holiday happy endings.

20% of all proceeds from O Come All Ye Kinky will be donated to the Domestic Violence Project of the National Leather Association–International. (If you buy the book, digital or print, from Riptide’s website, more money goes to the charity because we’re not paying third-party vendor fees.)

You can find out more about the anthology and all the stories here.

About L.A. Witt:

L.A. Witt is an author of gay erotic romances, and has been recently exiled from Okinawa, Japan, to Omaha, Nebraska. She resides there with her husband, a telekinetic goldfish, and two incredibly spoiled cats. It’s unclear if the exile was the result of the mostly classified “Aquarium Incident,” or if she’s actually being hidden, for her protection, from the Polynesian Mafia and her arch nemesis, erotic romance author Lauren Gallagher. Should you encounter Lauren, don’t tell her L. A. is in Omaha. You can find L.A. at her website, her author blog, her personal blog, on Twitter and Facebook. Everywhere, in fact. Lauren shouldn’t have any problems finding her.